Hofstadter's Law: "It always takes longer than you think, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account."
The assignment deadline policy this quarter has been designed to provide all students with built-in flexibility, given that the circumstances of online learning may sometimes be unpredictable. Here will be the general policy:
- Assignments deadlines will fall at the end of the day in the Pacific time zone, i.e. 11:59pm GMT-7.
- Preventative pro tip: One way to avoid accidentally missing a deadline is to submit unfinished work as soon as it would earn some credit, and then re-submit as you improve upon it. Then if something happens like your laptop falls into Lake Lag an hour before the deadline (for this hypothetical, imagine Lake Lag has water), your assignment grade might be saved by a mostly correct solution that you had already submitted.
- Everyone gets 4 automatically-granted 24-hr extensions for the quarter. Using one "late day" allows you to submit the assignment up to 24 hours after the deadline, with no impact on your grade.
- You may use at most 2 late days on one assignment. This means that you may use 2 of your 4 on the same assignment, and submit up to 48 hours after the deadline, but no more than 48 hours. The reason for not allowing more than 48 hours is that the next assignment will already be out, and we don't want you to fall behind on that one too. Timely submission also helps our SLs who do the grading have a reasonable amount of time to do their work–remember, they are students too!
- Late days are to be used in case of emergencies, such as illness, injury, personal crisis; as well as accidents like forgetting to submit even though you did finish. Late days are intended to give you built-in accommodation for unexpected snags and emergencies. You should not email course staff in those cases, you should just use a late day. If you have an exceptional situation that requires more than 48 hours and/or more than 4 late days total, arrangements may be made as described below.
- Exceptional situations: Again, the regular allocation of 4 late days is for use during exceptional situations. If you use some of them for non-emergencies like giving yourself time to study for an exam for another class, and then face a true emergency and email us about it, we will ask what happened to your previous late days and may not grant you additional exceptions. That said, we understand that many of life's emergencies have impacts longer than 48 hours in duration or could happen several times in a quarter. If you find yourself in a situation where you need more than 48 hours and/or all your 4 days were consumed for good cause and you still need more, email the Head TA Jonathan Coronado (email). Only the Head TA is able to approve exceptional situation exceptions. In particular, do not ask your section leader. You should make your request at least 24 hours in advance of the original deadline, or as soon as possible after an emergency situation.
Common questions about late policy
Does the deadline change depending on my time zone?
No, deadlines are the same for all students. For this course, we express all times in the Pacific time zone. You can assume any time in our course materials, website, and tools (Paperless, etc) refers to Pacific time.
If I make a first submission by the deadline, can I use a late day to make a later submission?
If you make multiple submissions, we grade the last one. If the last submission is after the deadline, you consume a late day. If you have a submission before the deadline but plan to submit again after the deadline, it might help to give your SL a heads up so they don't start grading the pre-deadline one and then have to grade again. You could ask your SL for their preferences on that sort of communication.